6 — Thursday, January 11, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ACROSS
1 Splendor
5 Lara Croft targets
10 In that case
14 Jamba Juice
berry
15 “Tommy” is one
16 Chewy Hershey
candy
17 Step on it
19 Activates, as a
security system
20 Tossed course
21 Company that
introduced
Styrofoam
22 Spacek of
“Bloodline”
23 Things to avoid
25 Foamy pick-me-
up
27 Defeat 
decisively
30 Tied in the 
harbor
33 Flowing garment
36 __ Paulo, Brazil
37 Roman poet who
coined “carpe
diem”
38 Creator of
Iceland’s 
Imagine Peace
Tower
39 Sleep on it
41 “SNL” writer/actor
Michael
42 “Becket” star
44 Auction ending?
45 Inert gas
46 Not very often
47 Like some poll
questions
49 Youngsters
51 Hamlet cousins
54 Put down
56 Crone
59 Knuckleheads
61 Wild bunches
62 Count on it
64 Lawn pest
65 “That’s too bad”
66 It might be a
whole lot
67 Follow
instructions
68 Covert agent
69 Safari shelter

DOWN
1 Bear feet
2 Aquaman’s realm
3 __ Cup: classic
candy in a yellow
wrapper
4 Hot and spicy
5 Young Spider-
Man portrayer
Holland
6 Pundit’s piece
7 Short note
8 Wild fight
9 Suppressed, with
“on”
10 False friend
11 Bet on it
12 Shade trees
13 Way too interested
18 Dumpster output
22 Put up with
24 “Well, sorrrr-ry!”
26 Massachusetts
college or its town
28 “Holy smokes!”
29 Stir
31 Letter between
Delta and Foxtrot
32 “It Ain’t All About
the Cookin’”
memoirist Paula

33 Pigeon calls
34 Poker stake
35 Bank on it
39 Chap
40 Cause of a buzz
43 Adventurous trip
45 “Another
problem?”
48 Forget-me-__:
flowers
50 Shoulder 
warmer

52 Jenna, to Jeb
53 Unsmiling
54 Firing range
supply
55 Doofus
57 Pond plant
58 Small valley
60 Editor’s mark
62 You may feel 
one on your
shoulder
63 Even so

By C.C. Burnikel
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/11/18

01/11/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, January 11, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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What makes country 
music so uncool today? 

I’ve spent the better part 
of my adolescence trying to 
be cool. I’m not going to hide 
it; all I ever wanted to do was 
be a frontwoman and pull off 
Doc Martens without my legs 
looking like toothpicks about 
to break under my weight. 
There was a solid year where I 
carried around “Catcher in the 
Rye” without even reading it. 
I’ve watched “Almost Famous” 
close to 15 times. I have a dorm 
drawer overflowing with band 
t-shirts to not only prove how 
annoying I was as a middle 
schooler, but also my passion 
for the grit and glitter of rock. 
I don’t know if I ever actually 
became cool in the end, because 
I definitely am not now, but the 
constant avoidance of what I 
believed to be “uncool” helped 
me recognize a set of guilty 
pleasures I just couldn’t give 
up. Even though I’ve been a 
proud proponent of almost 
every genre from London grime 
to experimental jazz, there was 
a large hole in the public aspect 
of that pride.
Now, I have a confession to 
make: I like country music. 
This isn’t exactly a crazy 
revelation, but for people who 
know me (and my undying 

worship of Stevie Nicks), it may 
be. But it’s true — I not only 
like country, it honestly raised 
me. I can remember watching 
Shania Twain’s Up! tour DVD 
with my sister twice a day for 
years of my early childhood. 
Even though I barely remember 
it, my first concert at age six 
was the Dixie Chicks. I went 
home 
this 
Christmas 
and 
found a hilarious photo of my 
younger self, wearing my mom’s 
cowboy boots and a tied-up 
shirt, twirling around with my 
toy guitar. It made me think 
about how much I used to love 
country, singing with my family 
in the car to songs like “Cowboy 
Take Me Away” and feeling 
unbearably happy. 
This year, I’ve come back to 
country in some ways, letting 
it calm me down when I’m 
missing my mom or dancing 
like a crazy person when I need 
a little relief from the world. 
But it got me thinking: What 
really makes something cool 
or uncool? What’s wrong with 
badass women like Faith Hill 
singing about their experiences 
in love and life, pulling your 
heart 
out 
with 
songs 
like 
“Breathe”? Why can’t I scream 
Hunter Hayes’s “Crazy” at the 
top of my lungs on the freeway 
without weird glances from my 
hipster friends? Even beyond 
pure, commercialized country, 

people are still weird about 
music that even sounds similar, 
immediately 
disregarding 
genres like roots rock, bluegrass 
and folk because of country’s 
reputation.
Look, I can understand where 
people are coming from when 
they say they hate the genre 
in its entirety. There are an 
increasing amount of bad apples 
in country music — people who 
stick to the same routine of beer, 
red dirt and tan legs over and 
over again and love to throw 
in a gratuitous banjo once in 
a while to spice it up. They’ve 
lost the soul that makes music 
good, and essentially pander 
to their blue-collar audiences 
while wearing designer clothes 
and living in mansions. They’re 
why I stopped listening in the 
first place. However, if you take 
a second to think about it, every 
genre has people like this. The 
rise of almost machine-made 
popular music has made a lot 
of people angry in every sector 
of the business. All I’m saying 
is, don’t knock it ’til you try it. 
It’s easy to avoid entire genres 
without taking a closer look, 
but there’s often something 
awesome hidden within the 
ugly. For now, I’m going to stick 
with this pursuit of exploring 
the uncool, and who knows — 
maybe I’ll come out of it with 
some twang.

CLARA SCOTT
Daily Arts Writer

‘The Good Place’ is 
Schur’s best work yet 

Can Michael Schur do any 
wrong? 
From 
“The 
Office” 
to “Parks and Recreation” to 
“Brooklyn 
Nine-Nine,” 
his 
particular style of comedy sitcom 
manages to outclass nearly every 
other show of its genre, excelling 
at being optimistic but not 
sappy and featuring memorable 
ensemble casts. Yet somehow, 
even when compared to the 
legendary aforementioned shows, 
“The Good Place” may just be his 
best work of all.
“The Good Place” returned 
from its winter break with the 
episode “Leap of Faith,” in which 
Michael (Ted Danson, “Fargo”) 
faces an unexpected visit from 
the all-powerful judge of the 
afterlife, Shawn (Marc Evan 
Jackson, 
“22 
Jump 
Street”). 
However, he somehow manages 
to leave the meeting unscathed, 
actually in a better position than 
when he came in. Nonetheless, 
Shawn’s verdict renders Eleanor 
(Kristen Bell, “How to Be a Latin 
Lover”), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), 
Chidi (William Jackson Harper, 
“Paterson”) and Jason (Manny 
Jacinto, “The Romeo Section”) in 
a spot of bother.
And I’ll leave it at that. 
Seriously, there is no better way 
to go into any episode of this show 
than completely blind. Unlike 
most major network sitcoms, 
“The Good Place” is highly 
serialized, speeding through its 
plot at a breakneck pace. Lesser 
shows may stretch moments, 

such as a montage of Michael’s 
failures earlier in the season or 
the initial plot with Shawn into 
who-knows-how-many episodes, 
but as Schur proves repeatedly, 

this show does not play by any of 
our rules. The infamous twist at 
the end of season one lent itself to 
thousands of fan theories which 
Schur ripped apart and tore 
down in the space of one episode. 
Amazingly, even the simplest 
gags are present in the show’s 
premiere, such as “The Good 
Place” automatically replacing 
profanity with words like “fork” 
and “shirt.”
Like always, the characters of 
“The Good Place” are captivating 
and marvelously portrayed. It’s 
hard to see anyone but Danson 
convincingly play Michael, a 
character that can make anyone 
fall for his charm while being a 
literal personification for evil. 
Bell’s Eleanor is much more 
clever this season and the most 
perceptive of the bunch. Jason, 
the show’s “Andy Dwyer,” makes 
a character who on paper is 
rather annoying into (like Andy) 
one of the show’s most loveable 
characters — shame he couldn’t 
be alive to witness his beloved 
Jaguars have a winning season. 
Meanwhile 
Janet 
(D’Arcy 
Carden, “Crazy Ex Girlfriend”), 

the 
personified 
“foundational 
mainframe” of the afterlife is 
more advanced than ever and 
provides some of the show’s best 
gags. We see her vomit coins, play 
the role of a trophy wife and even 
feel jealousy, all while cheerfully 
reminding characters at every 
turn that she is not a human and 
doesn’t actually eat or feel or die.
Perhaps 
the 
biggest 
accomplishment of the show is the 
fact that it tackles and introduces 
important philosophical theories 
and works them into the show in 
such a light-hearted, accessible 
way. After all, though modern 
philosophy is still viewed as a 
detached, academic discipline, 
“The Good Place” reminds us 
that studying philosophy may 
actually be a worthwhile venture. 
In one of the best episodes of the 
season, Chidi (the resident moral 
philosophy 
professor) 
teaches 
Michael and the others about 
the infamous “Trolley Problem,” 
which 
Michael 
proceeds 
to 
simulate in graphic reality. In an 
effort to make Michael actually 
care about learning ethics, Chidi 
makes him come to grips with 
the fact that he too can actually 
die (although in a more gruesome 
manner 
ironically 
called 
“retirement”), causing Michael 
to spiral into an existential and, 
subsequently midlife, crisis.
The fact that Michael Schur 
has wrapped all of these strengths 
into a major network sitcom is a 
testament to his immense skill 
as a writer. Few shows on TV 
are as original, funny, thought-
provoking and deserving of more 
viewers as “The Good Place.”

NBC

Kelly’s ‘Matisse Drawings’ 
make midwestern stop 
at the UMMA’s exhibit

Today, 
American 
artist 
Ellsworth Kelly and Frenchman 
Henri Matisse are recognized as 
two of the most significant artists 
of the 20th century. Yet, their 
lifetimes overlapped for a mere 
21 years; Matisse was nearing 
the end of his life as Kelly was 
starting out as an artist. For the 
amateur Kelly, Matisse’s works 
served as artistic inspiration 
as he developed his presence 
and 
style. 
During 
Kelly’s 
international travels following 
World War II, as he discovered 
artists that inspired him, it 
was Matisse’s emboldened use 
of line that informed his own 
unique style of draftsmanship.
“Matisse 
Drawings,” 
an 
exhibition 
Kelly 
curated 
in 
2014 at Mount Holyoke College 
Art Museum, is an opportunity 
to “see Matisse through the 
eyes 
of 
Kelly,” 
said 
Lehti 
Keelmann, Assistant Curator of 
Western Art at the University of 
Michigan Museum of Art. Kelly 
chose 45 seldom-shown Matisse 
drawings, to each of which he 
felt personally connected, that 
represent the scope of Matisse’s 
career.
Kelly 
supplemented 
these 
works with nine of his own 
lithographic 
drawings 
that 
date from a trip to France in 
the 1960s when he studied 
Matisse’s expression of figure 
and nature through line. Kelly 
shared Matisse’s intention to 
translate — rather than copy — 
nature in his work. While Kelly 
crafted a crisp and controlled 
drawing 
style 
compared 
to 
Matisse’s expressive use of line, 
Kelly’s drawings reflect his 
aspiration to draw in the spirit 
of Matisse whom he believed 
“every mark on the page that he 
made had that sort of distinctive 
quality that spoke to the artist,” 

Keelmann said.
Keelmann 
took 
on 
the 
challenge of translating Kelly’s 
curatorial vision as managing 
curator of the UMMA’s showing 
of 
“Matisse 
Drawings,” 
on 
display until Feb. 18. The public 
is invited to view the exhibition 
during the UMMA’s business 
hours (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.), as well 

as the opportunity to engage in 
deeper learning of Matisse and 
Kelly at “happenings” hosted in 
the spirit of the exhibition. The 
museum has exciting offerings 
this MLK weekend.
On Friday, Jan. 12 at 5:30 
p.m., John Stomberg — who 
collaborated 
with 
Kelly 
to 
curate the original exhibition 
at Mount Holyoke — will speak 
on the process of working with 
Kelly and situate the creative 
evolution of each artist within 
their 
respective 
contextual 
circumstances. 
Additionally, 
on Sunday, Jan. 14, at 2:00 p.m., 
UMMA will offer a gallery talk 
and tour where attendees can 
look forward to an exercise 
in close looking. A docent’s 
guidance will provide a roadmap 
to navigating the exhibition 
that will facilitate intimate 
engagement with the works on 
display.
“Matisse 
Drawings” 
is 
a 
traveling 
exhibition, 
the 
UMMA hosting its midwestern 
destination. 
Detailed 
instructions 
specifying 
the 
construction and installation 
of the exhibition guided the 
UMMA’s curation of Kelly’s 
vision. The two artists’ works 
are shown in separate spaces 

conjoined by a vibrant blue 
alcove. In this way, the showing 
of 
Matisse’s 
and 
Kelly’s 
drawings 
can 
function 
as 
separate exhibitions.
This architecture, however, 
creates a passage between the 
two spaces that evinces the 
rapport between the two artists, 
and it offers a way to physically 
navigate the ways in which 
Matisse’s use of line informed 
Kelly’s development of his own 
drawing style. Furthermore, the 
vibrant blue passage encourages 
a 
consideration 
of 
line 
in 
correspondence to these artists’ 
use of color in their oeuvres.
Kelly specified the height at 
which works were hung and 
evenly spaced them throughout 
the exhibition. He also forwent 
the use of tombstones that 
would provide context of the 
Matisse 
works 
— 
although 
tombstones 
do 
accompany 
Kelly’s lithographic drawings. 
In this way, Kelly curated the 
space in order to encourage an 
immersive visual experience. 
This exhibition is about deep 
looking 
and 
engagement 
with the medium of drawing. 
Both Kelly and Matisse were 
recognized for their use of 
color in their art, but they were 
equally creative in their use of 
line, and line informed their use 
of color.
“(Kelly) 
was 
trying 
to 
showcase that, really, drawing 
was integral, if not foundational, 
for 
their 
artistic 
practice,” 
Keelmann said.
Everyone has a relationship 
to line. “We can all take a 
piece of paper out and doodle,” 
Keelmann pointed out. “Matisse 
Drawings” 
puts 
two 
great 
artists’ drawings on display, but 
it is also an ode to the artistic 
practice of drawing itself. This 
exhibition serves to consider the 
creative expression of drawing, 
to which anyone who has picked 
up a pencil can relate.

ALEX SUPPAN
Daily Arts Writer

“Matisse 
Drawings”

On display until 
Feb. 18th

UMMA

Free

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer

“The Good 
Place”

Leap of Faith

Thursdays @ 8:30

NBC

TV REVIEW

